King James Version · Under Assyria
Hosea 5
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Hear ye this, O priests; and , ye ; and give ye ear, O house of the king; for is toward you, because ye have been a snare on , and a net spread upon . And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have been a rebuker of them all. I know , and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O , thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled. They will not frame their doings to turn unto their : for of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known . And the pride of Israel doth testify to : therefore shall Israel and fall in their ; Judah also shall fall with them. They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek ; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them. They have dealt treacherously against : for they have begotten strange children: now shall a month devour them with their portions. Blow ye the cornet in , and the in : cry aloud at Beth–aven, after thee, O . shall be desolate in the day of rebuke: among the tribes of Israel have I that which shall surely be. The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound: therefore I will pour out my upon them like water. is oppressed and broken in , because he willingly walked after the . Therefore will I be unto as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. When saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went to the , and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound. For I will be unto as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him. I will go and return to my place, till they their offence, and : in their affliction they will seek me early.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Under Assyria, 745 BC to 612 BC ›
Assyria at full stretch, deporting whole populations as policy. The northern kingdom is destroyed in 722 BC and Judah survives as a tribute-paying vassal.
- Assyria
- The first empire to run mass deportation as ordinary administration: move the leadership somewhere else, settle strangers in their place, and the province stops being a nation. It worked. Samaria fell in 722 BC and the northern tribes did not come back. Assyria also advertised its cruelty deliberately, carving flayings and impalements on palace walls where envoys would see them, because terror is cheaper than garrisons.
- Judah
- Survives by paying. Hezekiah rebels, Sennacherib takes forty-six Judean towns and besieges Jerusalem in 701 BC, and the city holds. The Assyrian account boasts of shutting Hezekiah up like a bird in a cage and pointedly does not claim to have taken the city, which is one of the more interesting silences in ancient records.
- Egypt
- The splintered reed of a staff that Assyria's field commander mocks Judah for leaning on. It promises help and cannot deliver, and Isaiah spends decades saying so. Assyria eventually invades and sacks Thebes.
- Further afield
- Greece is in its archaic period, founding colonies from Spain to the Black Sea. Rome is under kings. Assyria's own libraries are collecting the literature of Mesopotamia, which is how Gilgamesh survived to be read again in the nineteenth century.